There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

Finance is a slave's word.

Ruthless man: you begin by slaying the animal and then you devour it, as if to slay it twice. It is not enough. You turn against the dead flesh, it revolts you, it must be transformed by fire, boiled and roasted, seasoned and disguised with drugs; you must have butchers, cooks, turnspits, men who will rid the murder of its horrors, who will dress the dead bodies so that the taste decieved by these disguises will not reject what is strange to it, and will feast on corpses, the very sight of which would sicken you.

Those people who treat politics and morality separately will never understand either of them.

The happiest is he who suffers least; the most miserable is he who enjoys least.

To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences.